Subscribe

Author Archive

In addition to all the features around CheckMate that came out in the past week, we released a couple of other features that we’d like to tell you about.

Native File Format

Artists can now set the native file format for 3D model products when publishing. The native file format is the application format in which the model was initially created. This helps customers determine compatibility. Only those formats that are native to an application are selectable as native, for example Maya or Cinema4D, while exchange formats like OBJ, FBX, and DAE are not. If the native format is known, customers will see it listed first in search results. It will also be shown in the first row of the product preview technical specs section.

If you use the same native file format for all your products and you’d like us to update them all for you with this new information, please contact Support for assistance.

Renderer Used

For a number of the native file formats, we’ve also added in a required Renderer Used and optional Version field to the publisher. If we are missing your favorite renderer, please tell us and we’ll add it. Specifying the renderer assigned to the model will help avoid confusion for customers–the lack of this information is the most common cause for a refund request.

Tighter restrictions on file format version

We now require file format version with a native file format type. Currently published models stay as they are, but editing them requires the version to be added if it’s not already there. Again, this will help customers a lot in determining compatibility.

New login that remembers

The login/signup widget has been completely replaced. The only real new feature in there should be quite helpful–the “Remember me” feature. Normally, after several hours of inactivity, you are logged out. With Remember me, you stay logged in for 30 days of inactivity. For security reasons, you will need to log in again for security-related activities such as changing member or payment info or making a purchase.

Easier navigation to products in Reports and My Purchases

We’ve made it a little easier to navigate around products. In My Files/Purchases & Downloads, clicking on the product name now goes to product preview. In Reports, the Sales Monthly Details, Top Sellers, Downloads, and Ratings product ID field now does the same.

We are happy to announce to all government buyers that we have resubmitted our enrollment to CCR. The Central Contractor Registration (CCR.GOV) is the primary vendor database for the U.S. Federal Government. The CCR collects, validates, stores and disseminates data in support of agency acquisition missions. In addition to CCR, we have signed up for W.A.W.F. (Wide Area WorkFlow). If you would like more information, or would enjoy this type of billing and invoicing, you can read more about it here: http://support.turbosquid.com/entries/20213026-government-purchasing

We released some updates today. Most of them are stuff you won’t notice, including a set of improvements to our sales support systems. Here’s what you might notice:

Disabled Game-Ready certification submission: The option to submit for game-ready certification is retired. Any models currently submitted will go through the queue, and those that pass will receive the badge. Previously certified models will keep their badges. Search and full preview integration with game-ready certification continue to work as previously. If you change the Main Product files on a model with the game-ready certification, you will see a pop-up warning you that saving these changes will remove the certification. See the announcement about Game-Ready certification on our forum or the most recent Artist newsletter (Feb. 11) for more information.

Removed “Mature Content” option: This option is no longer relevant as we have been excluding any truly mature content for a while now. This policy is detailed in our Knowledge Base.

One-Click Zip: (I feel like I should throw a TM next to that) On the receipt page displayed after a successful purchase, customers can now click on a button which will start the downloading of a zip of all products in their purchase, saving precious clicks for future generations.

New design for CName pages: CName pages are subdomain landing pages like cars.turbosquid.com. These pages are generated automatically by our system, and they all have the same design. The design has been updated.

Today we released a few new features and bug fixes. Keep the feature requests and bug reports coming.

New Features:

Customers can now get a nicely formatted invoice, instead of just a sales receipt. There is a new “Invoice” option under the “more” pulldown in My Purchased Products and Purchase History folders. You can enter a PO#, Company Address, VAT, etc. to the invoice.

The Publisher now allows watermarking of turntables. The interface has also been adjusted to make it more obvious that the watermark is being processed.

Copy to Upload on a product in the Publisher will now copy all files associated with that product (main product files, source thumbnails, and accompanying product files) into a folder in your Uploads section. This was a request to make it easier to reuse already published files.

The white line around thumbnails and gray bars around non-square thumbnails are gone. So any thumbnail with background color of 247,247,247 looks like it’s floating on the page.

Bug fixes:

Fixed some bugs related to Starring in My Files.

Fixed an issue with duplicate products showing up in More Products by Artist section of Full Preview.

Downloading of promotional files from Full Preview no longer requires the user to be logged in.

A number of small UI issues were fixed/tweaked.

Share this:

One of the main things that helps TurboSquid keep improving is feedback from our artists and customers. This week we added a nice feature to the Publisher suggested by an artist, along with a few handfuls of bug fixes and upgrades.

In the past, if you had uploaded a bunch of files in the Publisher in preparation for publishing, it could be quite time consuming to actually add them to a product because you had to check individually the box for each file you wanted. You could select everything in a folder, but then you’d have to upload files to separate folders. To improve this, we’ve just added in the basic Shift-Select to select a list of items. Now in all the Add Files pop-ups, you can check the box for a file at the top of the page and scroll down to shift-select the checkbox for the last item you want — all of the items in between are selected. This should save a lot of unnecessary clicks.

We’ve also rolled out a few handfuls of small fixes and tweaks including:

We’ve removed the Mature Content attribute in Publisher and Member Info. This was little used, and we’ve just been using a more a global standard that disallows adult content.

In the search pagination bar, the last page number is now a link

Search results now default to the medium sized thumbnails.

In My Files/My Published Products, the sort by Total Sales now sorts completely correctly

Share this:

After the last major release, we’ve been tweaking some of the features based on user feedback. This week saw a bundle of upgrades go out, so now is a good time to give a summary of what’s been improved.

Turntables

We’ve seen a lot of artists taking advantage of turntableson their products and giving us useful suggestions for improvement. We’ve updated the system in a few ways:

You can now use up to 72 images in a turntable

Four digit padding is acceptable in naming (image-0001.jpg)

Both underscores and dashes are now acceptable (image-1.jpg and image_1.jpg)

Sequences can now start at frame 0

Full Preview

The vast majority of thumbnails that artists have uploaded since the main upgrade earlier this month are 600×600 and higher, taking advantage of the new options. New improvements related to full preview include:

Date published is displayed again

# of Download on free products is displayed again

The upload servers had some adjustments to deal with big files more effectively. Successful uploads of 1GB+ main product files and 3200×3200 pixel images are no longer a problem.

If an image has an Original sized image, but not a HD image, the image now shows the link to the Image Viewer.

A number of small bug fixes and tweaks also came out over the holidays to improve the system. There are a few more improvements/bug fixes based on testing and feedback since the release that we’ll come out with over the course of this month. We’d like to thank everyone who has given helpful notes to us about ways to improve the site.